Rick Warren at the Inauguration

In my mind, Warren is the guy who wrote a book that meth freaks use to keep from being killed by bank robbers.

Apparently, there’s more to Rick Warren.

He appears to be a friendly guy who hates gay people and Democrats. But Obama has picked Warren to give the invocation at the inauguration.

Fundies are not happy that Warren has accepted. And neither are liberals.

I’m annoyed by the choice.

I understand that Obama is trying to bring all Americans together, and that’s one of the reasons I voted for him.

My main objection is that we have all feel like we’ve been taking orders from right-wing preachers for the past eight years. I’m tired of that shit.

I don’t want to have to hear anything from them again any time soon, unless I choose to attend a fundie church.

The invocation by Warren makes me think that we might have to continue to listen to those batshit-crazy fundie preachers. Why can’t they just go away and preach to their flocks and leave the rest of us alone?

Sarah Palin: Pallin’ Around with Druggies?

Part of the problem with using guilt by association is that your associations are examined much more closely than they would be otherwise.

Sarah didn’t like that Barack had served on a board with William Ayers. Fine.

But I don’t like it that Sarah spent some time with Sherry, the mother of Bristol’s baby daddy.

From the Times:

State troopers have arrested the mother of Bristol Palin’s boyfriend on drug charges. The woman, Sherry L. Johnston, was arrested after troopers served a search warrant on a Wasilla home. Ms. Johnston, 42, has been charged with six felony drug counts. A trooper spokeswoman said in a news release that the charges were in connection to the prescription painkiller OxyContin. Ms. Johnston is the mother of Levi Johnston, 18. Gov. Sarah Palin, the Republican nominee for vice president, announced in September that her daughter Bristol, 18, was pregnant and that Mr. Johnston was the father. She is due to give birth this weekend.

Why does Governor Palin associate with druggies, and what connection does she have with the Medellin cartel?

See how Sarah’s logic can work against her?

Schadenfreude Theater

From the NY Post:

THAT although we didn’t think it would be possible to silence Ann Coulter, the leggy reactionary broke her jaw and the mouth that roared has been wired shut.

Sorry, I can’t help myself. Karma really does exist.

Who ARE These People??

Thank you Sarah Palin!

Ugh!

A political action committee is thanking Gov. Sarah Palin for her conservative values and service to America in ads timed for release around Thanksgiving.

Our Country Deserves Better Committee, a PAC that supported Palin during her vice presidential candidacy, will begin airing the ads on Tuesday.

In one, comforting music plays as images of Palin are flashed on a screen and a male voice says, “Gov. Sarah Palin, a grateful nation wishes to thank you for serving the people of America with a servant’s heart.”

The more cynical among us might prefer to thank Sarah Palin for giving us endless hours of comedy and for handing the election to Barack Obama.

Palinism???

WTF?

Today, in the parking lot of my local supermarket, I ran across this bumper sticker:

I’m not sure what this sticker might mean. upon completing a google search of “palinism bumper sticker,” I’m still baffled. There are no clear matches.

I take it to mean something like Michael Barone’s statement that “journalists trashed Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the Republicans’ vice presidential nominee, because “she did not abort her Down syndrome baby.”

Or am I reading too much into this?

The Future of the GOP?

Krugman:

You might think, perhaps hope, that Republicans will engage in some soul-searching, that they’ll ask themselves whether and how they lost touch with the national mainstream. But my prediction is that this won’t happen any time soon.

Instead, the Republican rump, the party that’s left after the election, will be the party that attends Sarah Palin’s rallies, where crowds chant “Vote McCain, not Hussein!” It will be the party of Saxby Chambliss, the senator from Georgia, who, observing large-scale early voting by African-Americans, warns his supporters that “the other folks are voting.” It will be the party that harbors menacing fantasies about Barack Obama’s Marxist — or was that Islamic? — roots.

I’ve been thinking about this and I’m starting to conclude that the 2012 GOP race could easily come down to a three-way between Palin, Romney, and Huckabee. Palin and the Huckster will have the theocons battling it out against Romney, who will represent the party’s old establishment.

In a race like that, Palin would have a decent shot to win the nomination as much of the base will still be angry about the media’s treatment of Palin and their unsubstantiated claims of ACORN-based voter fraud in 2008. Their resentment will linger and fester, causing them to nominate Palin in a final act of “fuck you” defiance that the hard-right theocrats seem to be so good at.

More from Krugman:

But the G.O.P.’s long transformation into the party of the unreasonable right, a haven for racists and reactionaries, seems likely to accelerate as a result of the impending defeat.

This will pose a dilemma for moderate conservatives. Many of them spent the Bush years in denial, closing their eyes to the administration’s dishonesty and contempt for the rule of law. Some of them have tried to maintain that denial through this year’s election season, even as the McCain-Palin campaign’s tactics have grown ever uglier. But one of these days they’re going to have to realize that the G.O.P. has become the party of intolerance.

I think we’ll win tomorrow. But once that happens, the battle will have only just begun.

You think the war the GOP waged on Clinton was ugly? It was nothing compared to what’s coming once Obama is in office. Limbaugh and his ilk will once again go apeshit accusing Obama of being a Muslim Marxist with a crazy Christian preacher who hates puppies and they’ll be crying about Michelle’s nonexistent “whitey” video and they’ll be angry at both of them because they will adopt a breed of dog that the wingnuts don’t favor. Remember how much they hate Socks that cat?

And, worse, the wingnuts will have the help of Fox News to rile up their resentment.

But in their anger, post-rationalism, and pettiness, the hard-right may cease to be relevant, especially if Obama, as expected proves to be a competent leader who inspires our better selves.

I can’t wait for the first GOP presidential debate, which, if this year is any guide, will be held shortly after the 2010 midterms.

No Treats for Kids of Obama Supporters

Funny:

If you can’t click the viswo because you’re at work, the basic thrust of the piece it that one Shirley Nagle questioned trick-or-treating kids when they knocked on her door and wouldn’t give candy to kids whose parents support Obama.

She even posted a sign outside her home that read: “No handouts for Obama supporters. Liars, tricksters, or kids of supporters.”

It’s so pathetic, it’s hysterical.

I don’t know if Shirley knows that her batshit crazy side is showing.

GOP’s Present and Future

I am loving this:

Aides to George W.Bush, former Reagan White House staff and friends of John McCain have all told The Sunday Telegraph that they not only expect to lose on November 4, but also believe that Mr Obama is poised to win a crushing mandate.

They believe he will be powerful enough to remake the American political landscape with even more ease than Ronald Reagan did in 1980.

Considering that Bush won by one or two percent in 2004 and called it a landslide, it’s fun to read that Bush’s minions are freaking out about a likely five percent or more win by Obama.

I know schaden freude doesn’t look good on my, but it’s damn fun!

The prospect of an electoral rout has unleashed a bitter bout of recriminations both within the McCain campaign and the wider conservative movement, over who is to blame and what should be done to salvage the party’s future.

My advice to the GOP is that if they want to be a viable party in the future, they need to dump the religous right and go back to being a party that supports smaller government, but stays away from social issues. No one wants the GOP in their bed rooms.

Snip.

“It’s hard to see a turnaround in the White House race,” he (former Bush speech writer David Frum) said. “This could look like an ideological as well as a party victory if we’re not careful. It could be 1980 in reverse.

“With this huge new role for federal government in the economy, the possibility for mischief making is very, very great. One man should not have a monopoly of political and financial power. That’s very dangerous.”

I agree with Frum on that one. I prefer an executive branch controlled by one party and the legislative branch controlled by another, but Bush and the GOP failed so badly, the Democrats deserve at least a couple of years of one-party rule.

In North Carolina, where Senator Elizabeth Dole seems set to loose, Republicans are running adverts that appear to take an Obama victory for granted, warning that the Democrat will have a “blank cheque” if her rival Kay Hagen wins. “These liberals want complete control of government in a time of crisis,” the narrator says. “All branches of Government. No checks and balances.”

Um. Didn’t we have six years of one party GOP rule recently? There were no checks and balances from 2001-2007. How did that work out for us? The Democrats will probably fuck up one party rule, but let’s let them try to deal with our nation’s problems. If they fuck it up, they’ll be out by 2011.

Snip.

But the real bile has been saved for those conservatives who have balked at the selection of Sarah Palin.

In addition to Mr Frum, who thinks her not ready to be president, Peggy Noonan, Ronald Reagan’s greatest speechwriter and a columnist with the Wall Street Journal, condemned Mr McCain’s running mate as a “symptom and expression of a new vulgarisation of American politics.” Conservative columnist David Brooks called her a “fatal cancer to the Republican Party”.

Snip.

Jim Nuzzo, a White House aide to the first President Bush, dismissed Mrs Palin’s critics as “cocktail party conservatives” who “give aid and comfort to the enemy”.

He told The Sunday Telegraph: “There’s going to be a bloodbath. A lot of people are going to be excommunicated. David Brooks and David Frum and Peggy Noonan are dead people in the Republican Party. The litmus test will be: where did you stand on Palin?”

Mr Frum thinks that Mrs Palin’s brand of cultural conservatism appeals only to a dwindling number of voters.

He said: “She emerges from this election as the probable frontrunner for the 2012 nomination. Her supporters vastly outnumber her critics. But it will be extremely difficult for her to win the presidency.”

Mr Nuzzo, who believes this election is not a re-run of the 1980 Reagan revolution but of 1976, when an ageing Gerald Ford lost a close contest and then ceded the leadership of the Republican Party to Mr Reagan.

He said: “Win or lose, there is a ready made conservative candidate waiting in the wings. Sarah Palin is not the new Iain Duncan Smith, she is the new Ronald Reagan.” On the accuracy of that judgment, perhaps, rests the future of the Republican Party.

Schadenfreude is a dish best served cold.

That being said, I am starting to think that Palin will be the GOP frontrunner in 2012 as the GOP rallies behind their socially conservative soulmate. By that time, I imagine that Obama will have had a relatively successful first term that will have the fundies up in arms over something.

Their two most viable candidates will be Palin and Romney. Huckabee may also play a role.

GOP voters will have to decide between a pro-business Romney and a pro-fundie Palin.

I have no idea which direction they will pick, but it will be a lot of fun to watch.

“Attacked” McCain Volunteer Admits to Lying about Incident

Developing…

Police sources tell KDKA that a campaign worker has now confessed to making up a story that a mugger attacked her and cut the letter “B” in her face after seeing her McCain bumper sticker.

Ashley Todd, 20, of Texas, initially told police that she was robbed at an ATM in Bloomfield and that the suspect became enraged and started beating her after seeing her GOP sticker on her car.

Police investigating the alleged attack, however, began to notice some inconsistencies in her story and administered a polygraph test.

Snip

This afternoon, a Pittsburgh police commander told KDKA Investigator Marty Griffin that Todd confessed to making up the story.

The commander added that Todd will face charges; but police have not commented on what those charges will be.

I wonder if the right-wing freak-out over this story will end, or if will they just make up something else to try to scare voters?

Todd is reprehensible, but probably is a good poster child for the GOP mindset in this campaign.

Something about Sarah

Yes, that’s our Ms. Palin wearing a red, white and blue donkey scarf. I wonder if the scarf was part of the $150,000 the campaign paid for new clothing for her and the family.

Oh, and I can’t forget this:

Palin said if she and husband Todd had had a sixth child, they had already picked a name for a boy joining siblings Track, Bristol, Willow, Piper and Trig.

“I always wanted a son named Zamboni,” she said.

Sigh.